Deceptions

by Michael Weaver

  “Because that’s not how I feel about him. It’s how I feel about you”

  There was only silence from the other end. Mary Yung was still waiting for Gianni’s reply when she suddenly realized what was happening around her.

  “Gianni!” The cry was involuntary.

  “What?”

  “I’m in trouble.”

  The wonder, to her, was her calm. It was as if she were responding in slow motion.

  “What is it?” Gianni’s voice was a shout.

  “They’ve got me boxed in.”

  “Who? What?”

  “An unmarked car with one man in it. He is waving me onto the shoulder.”

  “Does he have a gun?”

  Mary noticed it only then, and even that seemed dreamlike and slow, with the driver using the automatic to wave her off the road, motioning with it as though the pistol was merely an extension of his hand.

  “Yes. He has a gun.”

  “Damn them!” Gianni swore furiously.

  Mary Yung heard it all in the two words. “Who is he?”

  “Probably another of Donatti’s Sicilian connections.”

  “Gianni, if someone’s on me, you need to watch out. Get away from here fast.”

  An instant later she heard him swearing again. “Sonsof-bitches! You’re right. Someone is moving in now.”

  Then Mary heard a sharp burst of static as the phone must have fallen out of his hand or been struck by something.

  “Gianni?”

  There was no answer. Only the blasting of static. Which had gotten louder.

  The man waving her off the road with the automatic was shouting something at her that she couldn’t hear, didn’t want to hear, and wouldn’t have paid any attention to even if she did hear. She was too wild with rage and anguish.

  Murdering bastards, she thought, and was torn by a bloody vision of Gianni, riddled with bullets, lying slumped over the wheel of his car.

  Then the calm was on her again.

  Except that this time it was cold as she felt herself enter it… and as she felt, too, the sudden weight of the automatic in her hand.

  A certain far-off feeling settled and Mary Yung saw it happen from this same distance away, saw herself roll down her window, aim the automatic at the man speeding along beside her, and carefully squeeze off one, and then two shots.

  The first shot struck the driver in the head, he struggled to control the wheel. The second shot hit nothing, because by then the car had veered wildly out of lane and crashed broadside, at a hundred kilometers an hour, into Mary Yung’s car.

  She felt the impact.

  She felt herself lifted and riding through the air.

  She felt herself rolling once as they went off the shoulder and into the fall.

  Just before she hit, her eyes were open and looking someplace a thousand miles away that she couldn’t see.

  Gianni Garetsky had heard the worst of it, had heard the gunshots and the first sounds of the crash that came exploding out at him as his car phone broke loose and clattered around the floor. But even more chilling was the deadness of the silence that came afterward.

  Even now, tearing across a rough dirt trail with the car in hot pursuit and closing fast.

  How?

  It was as if they had known everything in advance… flight, car rentals, weapons stop, separating to cover both airport and hotel. They had to have been with them every step of the way. Then why had they waited so long before they moved?

  An idiot’s question.

  None of it meant a damn now.

  Now there were just Durning and Donatti laughing somewhere, a carload of mafiosi about to blow him away, and Mary gone.

  Mary.

  He let the best of her burn through him.

  She could have been safely on Capri. She didn’t have to do this. Yet she did.

  Gianni didn’t even try to figure that one.

  “I love you,” he told her softly. “I never stopped. I never could.”

  Marvelous.

  Now that she can’t hear.

  With that done, he focused on those at his back.

  All right, he thought. Let’s make it cost them.

  He still had about a quarter mile of lead, so he went about it coolly, without panic or rushing. This much he had learned from Vittorio.

  Opening the canvas duffel on the seat beside him, he took out what he needed and carefully thought it through.

  He was going to get only one shot at it.

  The conditions were about the same. A car coming up behind him on a rough, single-track dirt trail, with thick growth pressing close from both sides. It could be great if it worked, or a full-blown catastrophe if it didn’t.

  Goddamn do it.

  Gianni eased up on the gas and let the car slow without hitting the brake pedal and setting off any red warning lights.

  Watching the mirror, he saw the car coming up on him fast through his own trail of dust.

  At about thirty yards, he pulled the pin on a grenade and counted to six. Then he leaned out the window, lobbed it back in a high arc, and saw it hit an overhanging branch, angle off, and disappear into the brush.

  Oh, shit, he thought, and waited for the explosion.

  It didn’t come. He’d bought a fucking dud.

  Gianni picked up speed, activated another grenade, and tried again, making sure there were no low branches.

  This time the grenade went off over the car with a crackling roar and a bright orange flame. Dust, smoke, and flying debris shadowed the sun.

  He braked to a stop and got out. Then he pulled the pin on his third and last grenade, calmly counted to ten, and looped it over the heart of the carnage.

  “This one’s for her,” he told them, and dived flat out into the brush an instant before the explosion sent shrapnel whistling through the foliage over his head.

  Gianni lay there until things stopped raining down. Then he pulled the automatic from his belt, released the safety, and slowly walked back through the drifting smoke.

  There were two men in what remained of the car, and they each appeared to be dead.

  Gianni Garetsky stood staring at one of the men. Gianni was no longer angry. How could you be angry at the dead?

  The dead man opened his eyes. He looked at Gianni without expression, lifted the pistol he was holding, and shot him.

  Gianni felt the familiar stillness of falling.

  It wasn’t a bad feeling.

  It was almost like floating.

  And it was quiet.

  88

  THE LEAD BUS was just approaching the hotel grounds when the conference coordinator on board came over to Henry Durning and handed him a telephone.

  “A call for you, sir.”

  The attorney general put the unit to his ear. “Durning.”

  “My name is Cortlandt, sir,” said a controlled, New England voice Durning didn’t know. “I’m a company station chief and I’m asking you to please accept everything I’m about to say at face value. Are you hearing me all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “With the authority of the president, I’ve been handling security on you for the past twenty-four hours. And there have just been some negative developments.”

  Durning let several beats pass. “Like what?”

  “We’ve lost Carlo Donatti and Gianni Garetsky.”

  “Where?”

  “Donatti slipped away from us someplace in the Lalermo area. And two agents were just moving in to pick up Garetsky near your hotel when he must have been warned. Because he suddenly drove off like a wildman.”

  “Didn’t your people follow him?”

  “They followed, sir. But according to their calls, he left the road and took a dirt trail cross-country. I haven’t heard from them again, and I still can’t raise them from my end.”

  Durning felt a pull on him. “You said Garetsky must have been warned. By whom?”

  “I’m afraid that’s something else. About half an hour ago,
another of our cars was closing in on this woman who’d been tracking you from the airport—”

  “What woman?” Durning cut in.

  “Mary Yung, sir.”

  Naturally, thought the attorney general.

  “She was on her car phone, so we guessed she was warning Garetsky. Then she started shooting and the cars went off the road. When it was over, one of our best men was dead and she was close to it. And it was all unnecessary. She evidently thought we were a mob hit team out to get her.”

  Durning let it settle on him. Why should I feel such loss when I’d already lost her?

  The bus was pulling up in front of the hotel and the passengers were stirring.

  “I thought it best to alert you,” said Cortlandt. “Until we get you some decent coverage, please don’t leave the hotel. Donatti and Garetsky could be anywhere, and they’re obviously dangerous.”

  Durning sat there, the other passengers starting to crowd the aisle as they moved toward the exits. “This Mary Yung,” he said. “She was very badly hurt?”

  “Apparently, sir. Her car went into a gully. We meant her no harm. We simply wanted her in custody. It was all a misunderstanding.”

  “A misunderstanding,” the attorney general echoed dully.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “Cortlandt, sir. Tommy Cortlandt.”

  “And your position?”

  “Chief of station, Brussels.”

  “Thank you, Cortlandt. I appreciate your efforts, if not your results.” Durning broke the connection and returned the phone to the conference coordinator. Then he left the bus and walked into the hotel lobby with the two Supreme Court justices and their wives.

  Trying to concentrate on one thing at a time, the attorney general picked up his key, found a bellhop to locate and get his bag, and was changing his clothes in his room ten minutes later.

  When he left the room, he was wearing a jogger’s warm-up suit and running shoes and carrying an Adidas athletic bag that held all the evidence against Carlo Donatti that he had taken from his Washington safety-deposit box the day before.

  Durning left the lobby through a rear exit and found his car, a blue Volvo, waiting at the northeast end of the parking lot, exactly where his Naples connection had said it would be.

  The keys were in a magnetized box under the front bumper, and the weapons bag was in the trunk. Durning entered the car and did what had to be done.

  There were three fully loaded handguns in the weapons bag: a small .25 caliber revolver in an ankle holster, a 9mm automatic in a shoulder holster, and a naked .357 magnum. Durning strapped the shoulder holster under his warm-up jacket, set the ankle piece low and tight on his right leg, and placed the magnum loose under the top layer of evidence in the Adidas bag.

  This time, one way or another, he would get it done.

  And alone.

  Ironically, other than for Mary’s part, Cortlandt’s news had been more positive than not. At least for him. He had planned to lose his company security watchers during this final phase anyway. Garetsky had just saved him the trouble by drawing them off. As for Carlo Donatti’s losing them, that had been a foregone conclusion. The don knew his way around such things.

  Then with his neat, carefully drawn map spread out on the seat beside him, Henry Durning drove out of the parking lot and started toward the prudently selected site where it was all scheduled to happen.

  89

  PAULIE AND LANGIONO were able to walk to the site from the boy’s house in less than half an hour. And as Langiono had planned it, they were the first to arrive.

  The place was a surprise to Paulie. He had lived in the area all his life, and he had never known anything like this existed: a bright, delicately green clearing in the foothills beneath a line of cliffs that might have been home to a new breed of gods.

  The silence alone was awesome. It made the boy want to whisper. And when he glanced up at the sky, it seemed enough like heaven’s gate for him to expect a flock of Tiepolo’s more delicately rendered angels to come gliding out of the blue.

  The clearing was closed in by brush and trees, and Lan-giono quietly led Paulie in a wide circle through the growth. The boy didn’t understand until Langiono told him, “I just wanted to make sure nobody got here ahead of us.”

  Then the former lieutenant of detectives picked a spot about ten feet inside the brush from where the clearing began, and they sat down there together.

  Paulie sat very still, listening for some forest sounds. But he heard none. Not even those of insects. Then he heard a bird call from one of the upper branches of a tree, and it seemed to tear through his head like a siren. They were in the shade and it wasn’t hot, but the boy found himself sweating.

  Why am I so scared?

  He knew why.

  The same reason he cried after speaking to his mother.

  They were never going to let any of this good stuff happen.

  The boy knew this as surely as he had ever known anything.

  What he didn’t know was who they were.

  “Paulie?”

  The boy looked at Frank Langiono. He saw the way the sun broke through the trees and touched Langiono’s mostly gray hair and made it shine like he was some kind of holy person in an old religious painting.

  “I got to explain a few things, so listen carefully,” said the ex-cop. “In a little while your mom’s gonna be out there in the grass with the man I talked to on the phone before. When they come, you can go right out to her. But not me. I got to stay back here in the bushes, out of sight.”

  “Why?”

  “To wait for the other man in the deal to come. To make sure he don’t bring anyone with him or try anything funny.”

  The boy stared long and gravely at Langiono. “You mean you’re supposed to be like a bodyguard?”

  Langiono gave him his grin. “Something like that. So when the man’s out there with you, just be careful not to look in my direction, or say anything about my being here. You got that? Because it’s important.”

  Paulie nodded. “What would happen if he saw you?”

  “Nothing good.”

  Paulie suddenly felt his heart going very fast, and he began yawning, dryly, nervously. He was starting to see why Frank Langiono didn’t like his job very much.

  They sat there together, leaning against the trunk of a big tree and looking out toward the clearing. The bark of the tree felt rough and solid behind Paulie’s back, and he watched the way shafts of sunlight struck down through the foliage and lit the tops of bushes in shiny gold. He squinted his eyes almost closed to bring everything down to masses of light and dark, and thought about his father teaching him how to capture the true feel of the gold with paint, picking up great gobs of cadmium yellow and zinc white together on the brush, not blending, but leaving the color broken to catch the vibration of the light.

  The boy wondered if he was ever going to see his father again.

  Then he heard the first faint sound of a helicopter and forgot everything else.

  90

  HENRY DURNING HEARD the distant sound of the helicopter at almost the same instant as Paulie and Langiono.

  The attorney general was just getting out of his car where the dirt road ended, and he still had a good-size walk ahead of him to the designated clearing. Checking his map for a rising path through the woods, he found it about twenty yards off to his left and started the climb.

  He moved lightly and carefully, carrying his evidence bag in his left hand and his 9mm automatic in the right. The sun flickered in small, bright stains among the leaves, and the air was piney and aromatic after a nighttime shower.

  Then he thought of Carlo Donatti and had instant visions of snakes and demons setting off delicate warning systems in his path.

  It made him smile.

  Other than for the don bringing Irene, they were both supposed to be coming alone. But Durning thought he knew Donatti better than that. In all li
kelihood Carlo would have one or two people planted in the woods as backup. Which was exactly how he himself would have handled it if he hadn’t felt compelled to do it alone and finally be witness free.

  Mutual distrust. What better basis for a lasting relationship? Except that one way or another, this one was about to end.

  The sound of the helicopter suddenly was loud enough to make Durning look up.

  He swore softly.

  It’s him, he thought, and a spasm of something near to illness lifted from his stomach and touched his brain.

  Through a break in the trees, he saw the copter circle down out of the sky like some creature from another age. Sunlight flashed from the rotors and reflected from the bubble. Sudden gusts whipped leaves. Bushes leaned and bent as the aircraft hovered for a landing.

  Keeping low, Durning dashed the rest of the way.

  When he reached the level of the clearing, he saw the two figures almost instantly. They knelt in the brush about twenty-five yards away, watching the helicopter touch down. They were a man and a young boy. And although Durning had never seen either of them before, he knew that the boy had to be the long-missing Paulie.

  And the man?

  Definitely not Battaglia or Garetsky. This was an older man with graying hair and a tough, lined face. Probably Donatti’s backup.

  Durning crouched behind some brush and waited to see what would develop. What he understood least was what the boy was doing here and where he had come from. But he guessed he would soon find that out, too. Still, there was an element of confusion for him simply in the boy’s presence, and this was something he had never liked.

  Just watch and stop bitching, he told himself.

  He saw the helicopter lightly touch down at the center of the clearing. The wash whipped the high grass. The rotors screamed and slowed, and a hatch opened. Donatti and the woman Durning had once known but could no longer really recognize as Irene Hopper climbed out, ducked low, and ran to the far side of the clearing to escape the wash.

  Almost immediately, the engines roared up to speed again and the helicopter took off, sweeping low over the trees and rising quickly into the distance. In thirty seconds it was nothing more than a speck fading against the sky.